A Norman Rockwell Eclipse

Downtown Fairmont, Nebraska

I've wanted to see a total eclipse of the sun ever since I knew about them. When I heard about this one several months ago, I scouted the map of the path of totality for a place I'd like to go. I noticed a spot in Nebraska directly north of where my mother lives in Kansas. Fairmont, Nebraska was smack dab in the middle of the path of totality and a short two hour drive straight north from Salina, KS. I combined the eclipse trip with a visit with my mom, who accompanied me up north to see it on August 21st.

Fairmont, NE doesn't have much to draw visitors, but it's population swelled many times over on that day. Still, it wasn't like going to Seattle or some larger city that predictably drew massive crowds. We didn't really know what to expect, but had seen electronic highway signs warning drivers of large crowds on the roads so we left early. Highway 81 north of Salina isn't part of the interstate highway system, but it is a divided four-lane road so the traffic was fairly well spread out. Until, that is, we reached Concordia, Kansas. It's a small town, but highway 81 passes directly through it and there were three stoplights that caused major congestion on the northbound side of the road. We saw a lot of locals outside pointing their cell phones at the highway, filming what must have been the largest traffic jam Concordia had ever experienced. We saw mostly cars with license plates from Kansas, Oklahoma, and even Texas.

It was a great experience to
share with my mother.

Once we cleared Concordia it was smooth sailing all the way up to Fairmont. We stopped at a gas station/market just on the edge of town, along with everyone else who was making the trip that day. The employees were good-natured about the invasion, but they would have made more money by charging for the bathroom than they did from the sales of gasoline or coffee that day.

We drove on into Fairmont to scout out a place to park and a good viewing location. I had visited the town's website and knew that they had set up a couple of designated viewing areas which appeared to be baseball and possibly soccer fields. They had suggested parking anyplace in town where you could find a space so we drove down the town's main street and happened upon a pretty little park in the center of town. I was able to park nearby so we set up our temporary camp under the shade of a tree. It was mostly cloudy that day and it was cooler than it had been lately, but we still had no desire to sit out in the sun until it was time for the eclipse.

In light of recent events, I couldn't
help noticing a civil war statue in the
center of the park. It depicts a generic
civil war soldier and even the
inscription doesn't take sides.

We had an hour or more before it even started, so I took a walk around town. It looked like they had made a concerted civic effort to spruce up the town for the occasion, wanting to put on the best face for all the visitors, and they did. The streets were clean and festooned with American flags that are probably only displayed on national holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. There were a couple of enterprising people selling baked goods and bottles of water, and the American Legion was cooking hotdogs and hamburgers at one of the viewing areas. Curiously, I could find no one selling t-shirts. The city park where we were sitting was recently mowed and trimmed to look its best. It was classic americana, straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting - children playing on swings and happy, smiling, white people everywhere you looked. The only thing that made it obvious that we weren't in some Twilight Zone episode of time travel back to the 1950s was the sound of Pink Floyd being played over the town's loud speaker.

We were sitting in the shade of a tree, so I would periodically stand up, walk out to where I had an unobstructed view of the sun, put on the glasses and gaze at the sun. It had been hot and sunny all week, not a drop of rain and scarcely a cloud to be seen. However, on August 21st, it was cloudy and a chance of showers was in the forecast. We had chased a rain storm all the way north, having an unobstructed view of it for many miles as one does in Kansas and Nebraska. As the eclipse began, we were often viewing the sun through clouds of varying density. You could see the moon beginning to cut into the disk of the sun, but it was fuzzy from the cloud cover and I wasn't sure we'd be able to see much once it reached totality.

This is my one attempted cell phone pic.
It would be more accurate if I photoshopped
a black circle in the center so that only the
corona appeared as white light around it.

However, as the time of the totality approached, the clouds actually began to thin a bit and we could see a patch of clear sky making it's way towards us. We moved our chairs into the open and just sat there looking up, glasses on, watching as the moon eclipsed the sun. It grew dark rather rapidly and a golden retriever sitting nearby grew rather anxious. When the eclipse reached totality the sun went completely dark, I could see nothing at all and I thought, "damn, a cloud must have moved in at the last moment blocking our view." But then I removed my eclipse glasses and there it was, a perfectly clear view of the sun's corona, surrounding the black disk of the moon. The corona wasn't bright enough to be seen through the protective viewing glasses, but they weren't needed now anyway.

It was the most incredible sight. The sky wasn't completely dark because of light that was visible on the horizon, beyond the shadow that the moon cast onto the earth. It gave the sky a color unlike any I had ever seen, sort of slate, blue/grey color, against which the sun's corona appeared white as it surrounded the jet black disk that was the dark side of the moon.

If the Kentucky Derby is the fastest two minutes in sports, a total eclipse is surely the fastest two minutes in astronomy. I had read something prior to the event recommending that you just watch, don't waste your time trying to take pictures or post to Facebook and that was good advice. There were many incredible pictures taken by NASA and professional photographers that my iphone camera could never hope to match. But I have a memory that is unique to the time and place of our viewing and unmatched by any photo I've seen.